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Sunday, September 14, 2008

Looking Forward to Seedcamp 08

One of the highlights of my year - without a doubt - is Seedcamp. The one week of mentoring, networking, working, learning is really exhilarating.

Seedcamp is itself a start-up and its formation, evolution, development and growth is not unlike many of the start-ups in which I have been involved.

In my view, Seedcamp is destined to become a significant brand in the technology world. A founder with amazing vision (Saul), strong backing and goodwill from almost all the leading players in the industry and a brilliantly determined and smart CEO (Reshma) is a pretty good cocktail.

As was made clear last year, Seedcamp is not all about the relatively small amount of funding which the winners receive, it is designed to provide a publicity platform, an incredible network and some intensive and expert mentoring to the 20 or so finalists.

Every day this week, Seedcamp will be featuring highlights of the day on their site. Check it out.

The blog too has loads of interesting stuff - I particularly liked Michael Orland's post on the Zeitgeist:

It read in part: "Our 2008 application zeitgeist post exactly one month ago generated some attention, which is why when it was suggested we do a follow-up for our finalists I was a little hesitant. There's a fine line between a useful device and a gimmick, and I feared we might stray into the latter territory. After actually performing the analysis though, I see there are some interesting contrasts: "mobile" has dropped off the top of the "what are you creating?" list to be replaced by "travel", "advertising" is less of a top-line panacea (and yes, we realize the tautology of "revenue" as a way to make money - thankfully it was substantiated a bit more than that), and Amazon has replaced Google as the cloud solution of choice. There are other differences as well - which is why I'll cease my yammering and leave you to draw your own conclusions."

You should read the whole article.

As Michael acknowleges, its a bit of fun ....but ...interesting to see what teams are building and what the judges thought was going to be most successful.